A suicide bomber, disguised as a policeman, has killed an American soldier and wounded six other people at a police headquarters in northern Afghanistan.

Afghan officials said on Monday that a man wearing a police uniform blew himself inside the building.

General Abdul Rahman Sayed Kheil, a provincial police chief, said the bomber entered the police station while Afghan officials were meeting US soldiers advising a police training programme.

He said the blast killed an American soldier and wounded two others. Four Afghan security officers were also wounded in the blast.

Zabiullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, claimed responsibility for the blast in a phone call to the Associated Press, the news agency reported.

The attack which took place in Pul-e-Khumri, the provincial capital of Afghanistan's Baghlan region.

The US military said it was aware of an incident including some casualties but could provide no further details.

Source: Agencies

October 27, 2008

U.S. Takes to Air to Bomb Villages Inside Pakistan

By MARK MAZZETTI and ERIC SCHMITT New York Times

WASHINGTON — The White House has backed away from using American commandos for further ground raids into Pakistan after furious complaints from its government, relying instead on an intensifying campaign of airstrikes by the Central Intelligence Agency against militants in the Pakistani mountains.

According to American and Pakistani officials, attacks by remotely piloted Predator aircraft have increased sharply in frequency and scope in the past three months.

Through Sunday, there were at least 18 Predator strikes since the beginning of August, some deep inside Pakistan’s tribal areas, compared with 5 strikes during the first seven months of 2008.

At the same time, however, officials said that relying on airstrikes alone, the United States would be unable to weaken Al Qaeda’s grip in the tribal areas permanently. Within the government, advocates of the ground raids have argued that only by sending Special Operations forces into Pakistan can the United States successfully capture suspected operatives and interrogate them for information about top Qaeda leaders.

The decision to focus on an intensified Predator campaign using Hellfire missiles appears to reflect dwindling options on the part of the White House for striking a blow against Al Qaeda in the Bush administration’s waning days.

After months of debate within the administration and mounting frustration over Pakistan’s failure to carry out more aggressive counterterrorism operations, President Bush finally gave his approval in July for ground missions inside Pakistan.

But the only American ground mission known to have taken place was a Special Operations raid on Sept. 3, in which the roughly two dozen people killed included some civilians. American officials say there has not been another commando operation since.

American officials acknowledge that following the Sept. 3 raid they were surprised by the intensity of the Pakistani response, which included an unannounced visit to Washington, three weeks after the incursion, by the country’s national security adviser, Mahmud Ali Durrani. He registered his anger in person with top White House officials.

A senior administration official said Sunday that no tacit agreement had been reached to allow increased Predator strikes in exchange for a backing off from additional American ground raids, an option the officials said remained on the table. But Pakistani officials have made clear in public statements that they regard the Predator attacks as a less objectionable violation of Pakistani sovereignty.

“There’s always a balance between respecting full Pakistani sovereignty, even in places where they’re not capable of exercising that sovereignty, and the need for our force protection,” said the administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Top American officials have justified the Sept. 3 ground raid as a self-defense response against militants who use havens in Pakistan to launch attacks against American and allied forces in Afghanistan. Those attacks have increased by about 30 percent from a year ago, according to military officials.

As part of the intensified attacks in recent months, the C.I.A. has expanded its list of targets in Pakistan and has gained approval from the government there to bolster eavesdropping operations in the border region, according to United States officials.

Once largely reserved for missions to kill senior Arab Qaeda operatives, the Predator is increasingly being used to strike Pakistani militants and even trucks carrying rockets to resupply fighters in Afghanistan.

Many of the Predator strikes are taking place as deep as 25 miles into Pakistani territory, not just along the border.

Spokesmen for the White House and the C.I.A. declined to comment for this article.

The information about the American operations inside Pakistan was described in interviews by a dozen military and civilian officials from the United States and Pakistan, who insisted on anonymity because of diplomatic concerns and because details remained classified.

While Pakistan is now headed by a new civilian government, under President Asif Ali Zardari, the tense discussions between the countries over counterterrorism operations appear to echo at least some of the uneasiness that long characterized the partnership between Mr. Bush and Pervez Musharraf, the former president. He was defeated in parliamentary elections in February and left office in August.

Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, told the Council on Foreign Relations this month that the two nations were cooperating in deploying “strategic equipment that is used against specific targets.”

On Oct. 16, a Predator strike in South Waziristan killed Khalid Habib, a senior Qaeda operative. But the strikes sometimes have unintended consequences. On Sept. 8, one in Miranshah on a compound owned by a Taliban leader, Jalaluddin Haqqani, failed to kill him but did kill women and children. On Aug. 27, a Predator strike near the village of Wana missed its target; it is unclear whether civilians were killed.

Senior military and counterterrorism officials say the increased Predator strikes have disrupted planning, pushed some insurgents deeper into Pakistan, prompted some militant commanders to post additional sentries and forced the militants to use their cellphones and satellite phones, which American eavesdropping operations can monitor.

“It’s fair to say that it has caused key Al Qaeda figures to focus even more on their safety and security,” said a Western counterterrorism official. “It has caused them to be more suspicious of people they don’t know well, and it also has caused frictions between Al Qaeda and tribal elements.”

But the official acknowledged that the intensified operations have failed to shake Al Qaeda’s hold on the tribal areas. “Things haven’t gotten to the point that they would even consider another option,” he said.

Pakistan and the United States are also taking steps to repair the relationship between their intelligence services, which reached a nadir this summer after evidence emerged that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate had a hand in the July bombing of India’s embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, Pakistan’s top military official, recently replaced not only the ISIs commander but also four midlevel generals believed to have had advance knowledge of the embassy bombing.

The C.I.A. has also put a new station chief in Islamabad, replacing one whose tour of duty had ended and whose relationship with the ISI had become contentious.

Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, the new head of the ISI, is in Washington this week and is scheduled to meet with the C.I.A. director, Michael V. Hayden.

Pentagon officials have publicly praised the Pakistan Army’s aggressive campaign against militants in the Bajaur tribal agency. But privately, some American officials are wincing at a full-scale military operation that is taking a heavy toll on civilians as well as insurgents, and has not diminished the cross-border attacks.

“They don’t have a concept of counterinsurgency operations,” one senior American officer said. “It’s generally a heavy punch and then they leave.”

More than 200,000 people have now fled the attack helicopters, warplanes, artillery and mortar fire of the Pakistani Army, and some officials in Washington say the Pakistani government has been slow to follow up with food, water and other assistance to help displaced villagers. The United States has approved $8 million to aid the refugee effort.

Still, a senior official in the State Department said the situation was a vast improvement from years of Pakistan’s off-again-on-again military operations in the tribal areas.

“They have shown more fight than ever before,” that official said of the Pakistanis. “They show no desire to negotiate with the militants.”

The official said that Pakistan’s civilian government had been moved to act in part by large-scale terrorist attacks in Pakistan, like the Sept. 20 bombing at the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, which killed more than 50 people.

Monday, October 27, 2008 13:49 Mecca time, 10:49 GMT

Pakistan Taliban 'commander killed'

Pakistani forces are battling pro-Taliban fighters in South Waziristan for months now

A Pakistani Taliban commander accused of launching cross-border attacks in Afghanistan was among 16 people killed in a suspected US missile strike, according to a senior Pakistani official.

The commander, Haji Omar Khan, died when at least two missiles struck a training camp in the South Waziristan tribal region near the Afghan border on Sunday night, Mawaz Khan, a local administration official, told the AFP news agency.

"The death toll has gone up to 16 as six more bodies have been recovered from the site. Senior Taliban commander Haji Omar died in the strike," Khan said.

The Associated Press news agency quoted Pakistani intelligence officials as saying that up to 20 people were killed.

Loss confirmed

The Pakistani Taliban later confirmed in a communication to Al Jazeera that one of its important leaders was killed in a US air strike in South Waziristan, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Islamabad said.

South Waziristan is considered a possible hiding place for Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda chief, and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Two Pakistani intelligence officials said the targeted house in Mandata Raghzai village belonged to a lieutenant of local Taliban chief Maulvi Nazir.

The officials, citing reports from agents and informers in the area, said fighters cordoned off the scene and the identity of the victims was not immediately clear.

In a separate incident on Monday, Pakistani police said a car bomb exploded in the western city of Quetta and killed two people.

The bomb exploded on Monday in a parking lot near government offices and the Iranian consulate, a senior police officer said.

He said a rickshaw driver and another person died while 10 others were injured.

Swat fighting

In recent fighting, at least 15 people were killed in clashes between suspected pro-Taliban fighters and members of an armed tribal group in northwest Pakistan on Sunday, according to officials.

Up to 80 members of the so-called tribal Lashkar, a group raised to tackle fighters loyal to the Taliban and al-Qaeda, were also abducted amid the fighting, which took place in the Matt area of Swat valley on Sunday, sources told Al Jazeera.

Three local commanders were killed in the clashes, while 12 tribal leaders were hanged, they said.

Fighting broke out when supporters of Maulana Fazlullah, a local religious leader with links with to the Pakistani Taliban, tried to abduct Pir Samiullah, leader of the Lashkar in Matta, a military official said on condition of anonymity.

"Scores of Taliban raided Mandal Daag village in the Matta district of the valley to abduct Pir Samiullah," the official told the AFP news agency.

Samiullah, who leads a 500-strong armed group of local people, and his supporters have demanded that the Taliban leave Swat.

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The Pan-African News Wire is an international electronic press service designed to foster intelligent discussion on the affairs of African people throughout the continent and the world. The press agency was founded in January of 1998 and has published thousands of articles and dispatches in newspapers, magazines, journals, research reports, blogs and websites throughout the world.
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